


Getting Things Off Your Chest

by blafor



Category: Heretical Edge - Cerulean
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Natural Heretic!Flick, Spoilers for 28-05, Tabbris Talks Early
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 09:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15726789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blafor/pseuds/blafor
Summary: In an alternate universe Flick and Roxa have their much needed discussion about Flick's past and the secrets she has been keeping for years.





	Getting Things Off Your Chest

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This snippet contains spoilers for Heretical Edge by Cerulean. If you haven't read up to (and including) chapter 28-05 you might want to do that first. 
> 
> I've finally got around to migrating this snippet from where it was originally posted on the Heretical Edge Spacebattles discussion thread.

It took a few days from when Roxa had confronted me about being possessed until we finally had a chance for the explanation I had promised her. Roxa and I had ended sharing the night watch while the rest of the group slept. Returning to the campsite from my combination water run and minor scouting mission I stepped back through the brush covering the entrance to our hideout.

“Everything good Felicity?” Roxa asked.

“As far as I can tell it's just us, the wildlife and the trees out there” I responded lightly.

After confirming that it was only me and we weren't about to suddenly be attacked by swarms of Seosten troops Roxa relaxed slightly. Gidget padded toward me, pausing when I reached out my hand to allow Gus to scurry up my arm from her back before she settled back down watching the exit.

Settling in myself, I turned to Gus who had perched on my right shoulder “so were you good for Roxa and Gidget?” As he was a robot mouse he didn't say anything in response, instead he just nuzzled into my shoulder.

“We had a good time,” Roxa said with a smile. “It's been pretty quiet, everyone fell asleep while you were out.”

We wouldn't get a better time then alone on guard duty with everyone else asleep to have the conversation. I still paused. _You did promise we would explain things..._ The familiar voice of my long time partner in crime. Making a good point as always even if I could feel her nervousness as well.

_I know. Even though Roxa knows about you, it's just a little scary to finally be putting all our cards on the table after hiding and keeping all of this a secret for five years._ I knew that Tabbris felt the same way as I did. It didn't need to be said, but saying it anyway, confirming that we were both feeling it, recognizing that it was there felt better somehow.

Taking a breath and trying to keep my tone light “I think I promised you an explanation. We good to talk?”

“The cone of silence is up,” Roxa replied with a soothing tone and soft expression sensing my apparently obvious nervousness. “No one but us will hear anything that we talk about.”

“I told you, Tabbris has been possessing me since I was a kid- She's Vanessa and Tristan's half sister- Sariel, their mom sent her to protect me from other Seosten possessing me because of who my mom is.” After all this time I was having trouble figuring out how exactly to explain everything that had occurred. “It's a really long story...” I trailed off lamely.

“I'll listen for as long as it takes” Roxa said prompting me to continue, “take as much time as you need.”

“I suppose I should get this out of the way then. I wasn't exactly the regular Bystander everyone thought I was when I came to Crossroads.”

I really should have expected Roxa's raised eyebrow and wry smile, but it did help lighten the mood. “I mean more than that. When I came to Crossroads I was already a Heretic. A Natural Seosten Heretic.” I let out a breath, “I guess I should start at the beginning though, everything will make more sense that way.”

After five years of fear and lies, of keeping secrets the words just started falling out. It felt good to finally tell the truth of our past. Like draining an infected wound. I had already trusted Roxa with most of my secrets and she had my back ever since she got involved. She had found out about Tabbris and that had ended up in what was likely the best possible way that it could. I knew that I should have trusted my friends with my most carefully guarded secret before this. The guilt had about it had been eating at me for most of the year. Trusting Roxa with it now didn't feel like a bad decision, it didn't scare me like the idea usually did.

_We can trust Roxa._ Tabbris said adding her own thoughts toward our decision. _She already knows about me._

“Like I said before, Sariel was working with Larissa Mason. They were friends. Sariel had been possessing Larissa when she was a kid, the Seosten wanted her to infiltrate Gaia's inner circle and figure out what secrets she was hiding.

“That didn't happen though, instead she met a Heretic from Eden's Garden. They ended up falling in love and running away. They started a family together and had two children Vanessa and Tristan. The Seosten eventually tracked them down and used the same thing on them that sent us here.

Because Larissa was the last person that Sariel had possessed since she left and went on the run she was able to temporarily project herself back to Earth despite the banishment.”

“That must have worked out well,” Roxa said, easily seeing the use of being able to circumvent the same magic that currently kept us away from earth.

That prompted a small dark chuckle from me. “Being able to possess the guards was really helpful in getting us out of Radueriel's lab without being captured, I'm still a little bitter about having to burn my previous possession marker though. I would've exploited that work around as mercilessly as possible.”

I could feel the guilt in Tabbris' voice. _I'm sorry Flick. If you didn't have to worry about keeping me safe, I could have gotten the information we needed and we would still have your ability project back to Earth._

Roxa must have seen Tabbris' reaction in my face because before I could do more emphasize my complete lack of anger at my partner she cut in.

“It's not your fault Tabbris,” Roxa said in a comforting tone. “With how crazy everything was, if you had to get out to possess everyone that Felicity did it would have made things more dangerous. That's not even talking about what would happen if anyone else saw you in the heat of moment. Letting Felicity handle the guards was the smart thing to do.” Roxa shifted slightly before continuing, “it might have been useful to have. We'll do without. It might take longer. We've all been through a lot together. As long as we keep working together I'm sure we'll be able to make it back to Earth.”

The slow warmth of Tabbris' emotions at Roxa's words brought a smile to my face. Reinforcing the other girl's point I directed my thoughts at my partner as well. _She's right Tabbris, it wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong._

Tabbris' words came out quietly, “t-thanks Roxa...”

“Don't worry about it kid,” Roxa said smiling, “I might not have known about it at the time but every time Felicity has had my back you were there too. If you need someone other then her to tell you when you've done a good job I'm here.”

I took a metaphorical step back and focused on my enhanced senses keeping watch on the surrounding area as Tabbris continued filling Roxa in on the relevant background information related to our situation.

“Like Flick said, Mama and Aunt Larissa were working together. They were trying to track down Vanessa so Mama could cast a spell to break the banishment keeping everyone separated. While they were working together Mama restored Aunt Larissa's memories of the revolution.

Mama knew where Flick's mom was so Aunt Larissa went to find her and restore her memories. They were too late for that though. Flick's mom was already gone and Aunt Larissa found Flick instead.

Mama knew that Flick was in danger because of who her mom was. That the Seosten would try and take her. To possess her, use her to hurt everyone who believed in what Joselyn Atherby stood for. The people who wanted to change things, to make things better for everyone.

She needed to smuggle me out of Seosten space to somewhere safe too-”

Seeing the question almost put to voice on Roxa's tongue I cut in quickly, my words coloured with both of our anger at was being done to Sariel “-let's just say that the Seosten are doing some really fucked up stuff. That bitch Kushiel's name is on our list for what she's doing to Sariel.”

“I'll help out however I can,” Roxa said, wincing at the implications of my words.

Tabbris' happiness at the idea of Roxa having our back back was obvious as she continued speaking. “Mama taught Aunt Larissa a spell to bring me to Earth. I was really little then, so they had to add more spells so that I would stay quiet and inside until I could understand what was going on. It was like sleeping, dreaming inside Flick until I got bigger and understood more about the world.

Aunt Larissa brought me to Flick and had me hide inside her. She said she'd be back when I woke up...”

“That must have been really scary for you Tabbris.” Roxa said, making the connection that Larissa hadn't been able to make it back to us.

Giving a short nod Tabbris continued speaking over the lump in our throat. “I kept hoping that she'd come one day. I did what she and Mama said to. I hid. I stayed quiet and waited...”

Giving Tabbris a moment to recover I took over speaking. “The main problem with Tabbris' plan of staying quiet and hiding was that my mom has a lot of enemies.” I let out a broken chuckle at the situation. “You can imagine how terrified Tabbris was when I went to a dentist appointment and Fossor was there instead of my regular dentist.”

Roxa winced at the image. “Is that when you started talking to Felicity Tabbris?” Roxa asked curiously.

“Yeah... well... later that night.” Tabbris replied as we shivered at the memory, “I was really scared. We only found out about the deal Flick's mom made with Fossor to protect her from him this year. I didn't know what he was going to do. If he was going to hurt Flick. If he was going to try and take her away. I could protect Flick from Seosten agents trying to possess her just by being there with her. I'm not strong enough to fight off a monster like him though.

“My mama had taught me spell while I was sleeping that would have let us get in contact with Aunt Larissa. If she was anywhere in the general vicinity of Earth. It needed some specific ingredients beyond just runes and power though. I couldn't get them on my own so I hadn't seriously thought about it before then. I needed Flick's help to try and get in contact with Aunt Larissa. Even if something was preventing her from coming to us... maybe she could still tell us what to do.”

“You couldn't do it by yourself,” Roxa commented putting the pieces together, slightly reaching forward for a moment before drawing back, an odd expression on her face. “Well... you could have but you would've needed to take control of Felicity to do it. You weren't going to do that so you had to start talking to her. Had to tell her what was really going on if you were going to try and get help.”

“That's pretty much what happened.” I said, taking over telling the story. “I woke up that night to a terrified little girl in my room talking about my mom being a hero and seeing monsters. Begging for my help. Even though I thought I was dreaming, I didn't want her to be scared. So I said I'd help her. I was obviously a little surprised when she kept talking to me after I woke up in the morning though.”

Roxa gave a little laugh at the visual before cutting herself off abruptly, “I'm sorry Felicity, that really isn't funny.”

I shrugged a bit to show that I hadn't taken offence. “It really wasn't at the time. You're right though, it's kind of funny in retrospect if you think about it like that.

“I didn't completely believe her for the first few days, but we started working together, hunting down the components for the spell. Tabbris started teaching me about everything that was going on behind the world that I thought I knew.”

I paused for a moment, our memories and emotions of that time washing over me.

“Things got more serious a few days later. The news started spreading that something had happened at my dentist's and everyone that worked there was dead.” I said. “Even though Tabbris had told me that Fossor had pretended to be my dentist it was still shocking to hear that everyone was dead. Even though Tabbris and I had been talking for a few days at that point, part of me was hoping that everything was all an especially long, drawn out and detailed dream. It wasn't though, and I had to deal with that.

“We were both kids at the time, so we could only collect the ingredients we needed for her spell so quickly. Tabbris had already explained to me what Sariel had told her about Fossor and what she'd heard him say while I was unconscious. Like Tabbris said, we didn't know what Fossor had planned. If he would just show up out of the blue one day. Fighting him then would have been like trying to punch a mountain to death with our bare hands.”

It was an unfortunate truth. Ever since Tabbris had revealed herself to me and explained why she had Fossor was a looming threat, dangerous and unpredictable who cast a terrifying shadow over our lives. It was a warped thought but in some ways Fossor's appearance on my birthday and his threat to come after me once I'd turned eighteen had been a relief. It was a literal deadline. But, we knew when it was now. We knew the day that I had to prepare for. To get enough power to rescue my mother. To kill the bastard that had taken her from us. I didn't have to wake up every morning with the lingering worry that today was the day that a monster I couldn't stop would come back.

I could feel the Tabbris' guilt and regret bleeding through like an old wound even before she started speaking. _Sorry Flick. If I hadn't been so scared. If I'd been stronger. I could have taken care of everything on my own. You could've had a normal childhood. You wouldn't have had to worry about the monsters like Fossor coming back every day..._

I pushed all of the acceptance and love that I had for the younger girl at her as I responded. _I might not have known that I needed to worry about Fossor, but he would still be out there. If you hadn't started talking to me we wouldn't have had the extra time we did to get started on preparing for him. Even if I couldn't cast most of it myself until this year I had a crash course in “Magic 101- Keeping Yourself Alive When Everyone Wants to Kill You” by the best teacher I can think of. I wouldn't have the advantage of going through the Edge while already being a Natural Heretic. We wouldn't have been able to steal every scrap of power that Charmeine had and make it our own. We wouldn't be as strong as we are now without that and we're going to need every advantage we can get going forward._

I paused for a moment letting my words sink in before continuing.

_More important then all of that, if you hadn't started talking to me you'd have been all alone. Carrying this all by yourself until I got to Crossroads. You're my partner. My little sister. You know how much I love you. I'd take having to worry about Fossor every time if that meant that you'd be in my life. You didn't get a normal childhood either. Even if you hadn't started talking to me that wouldn't have changed. Maybe we couldn't have normal childhoods. At least we had each other though._

_I wish things had been better._ Tabbris replied. _That our whole families could been there with us. You're right though, I'm really glad we had each other._

“Everything alright you two?” Roxa asked, tensing as she noticed our momentary pause. Obviously wondering if we had noticed something that had slipped past her enhanced senses.

“Just retreading an old argument and playing a game of what if.” I responded.

Roxa relaxed at the confirmation that hostile Seosten troops weren't about to be right on top of us. “How about you Gidget?” She asked, turning to her cyberform weapon. “Sense anything that we need to worry about?”

Gidget turned away from from the exit and gave a long slow yawn looking at Roxa before resting her head on her paws. Obviously she hadn't sensed any incoming threats.

We all settled back into our watch.

“It took a while, but we managed to get all the ingredients we needed for the spell. We put them all together and cast it...” I trailed off momentary at the emotions that the memories that the story had stirred up.

“Larissa was already stuck in Seosten space so she couldn't respond to the two of you.” Roxa filled in the missing words.

“Unfortunately... yeah,” I responded, “We've been through a lot of bad stuff in our life... That night when we cast the spell and it completely failed on us is up there as one of the worst moments.”

“A-Aunt Larissa was the only person I knew that we could actually trust.” Tabbris said, taking over speaking. “Mama said that the Seosten could have been possessing anyone. Drawing attention to ourselves-if anyone found us, it would've been bad. The only people we could rely on were each other.

“We were too young to do much. We wouldn't have been strong enough to stop anyone who came after us let alone monsters like Fossor. Humans can get stronger by becoming Heretics though.”

“Fortunately Felicity had a friendly Seosten around to become a Natural Heretic off of.” Roxa said with a smile.

Tabbris met Roxa's smile with a small one of her own.

“Exactly,” I said, taking over the speaking role. “Unfortunately becoming a Natural Heretic isn't as easy as a lot of the stories seem to make it out to be. Sure for some people like Professor Dare it takes a lot. But, a lot of them seem to have been really lucky with their 'oh I got some blood in my wounds and now I've got superpowers and can see monsters... neat!'”

“I'm guessing making you into a Natural Heretic wasn't that easy?” Roxa responded with a dry tone.

“Got it in one.” I said with a laugh, “It took us a few tries to get it right. Still adding those first failures on top of being unable to contact Larissa wasn't the best thing for us... you know, emotionally speaking. Still we kept at it and eventually managed to pull it off. I regained the ability to use magic that had been stolen from humanity. Tabbris no longer needed to expend effort to allow me to see through the Bystander Effect. And most useful to us, I gained the Seosten possession ability.”

Our success at turning me into a Natural Seosten Heretic was absolutely one of the high points of our shared childhood. After continuous failures it was a shining star of our success. After all even with the various threats looming over us, every kid wants to have superpowers.

_Remember all the fun we had while you were learning how to use the possession ability Flick?_ I could hear the smile in the mental voice of my other half.

Tabbris was right, there were a lot of fond memories we shared from when she taught me how to use my new abilities. Part of the reason behind those memories was that we didn't often practice my possession ability on the other people. Instead we used animals for training it. Managing to chase down and touch stray animals to trigger my possession ability was serious exercise in and of itself. Still it was completely worth it for the chance to fly using the wings of a bird, run through the trees with the energy of a squirrel or confidently wander through a night as clear as day in the body of a cat.

“Becoming a Natural Heretic solved some of our problems,” I said, pulling myself back from fond memories, “our new problem was there's only so much we could find out beyond relying on the memories that Sariel left. We were trying our hardest to keep a low profile and avoid having anyone suspect that I was anything other then an ordinary little girl. We were also just to far away from the action to be able to find anything meaningful.” I gave a small shrug. “We were about the right age to join Eden's Garden. We had hoped that they would invite us to join their school. We'd have been in a better position both to get stronger and figure out what was going on. They didn't though. We were left to our own investigations, keeping a low profile and piecing together the whatever scraps of information we could get our hands on.

We got into a few small misadventures. Nothing near as crazy as what we've been getting up to this year though. Everything stayed pretty quiet up until we got the invitation to Crossroads that we were hoping for.”

“Professor Dare showing up to invite you to Crossroads must have been a huge relief.” Roxa said.

“You have no idea,” I agreed quickly, “we didn't get the recruited by Eden's Garden. That was fine, being invited to Crossroads was still a possibility. It got closer and closer to when the new semester would start and we still hadn't heard anything. We were getting pretty nervous about not having made their list.”

“Did you two have anything planned if Crossroads didn't choose you as a student?” Roxa asked a curious tone in her voice.

“Not exactly,” Tabbris replied, “Flick would've been old enough to start using magic without me helping. Um-old enough that we could start travelling a bit. Look for clues without anyone watching getting too suspicious.”

“With magic and my possession ability we would've had to be careful,” I continued, “it wouldn't have been as good as being at Crossroads. Better then nothing though.”

“Lucky that the two of you ended up at Crossroads then.” Roxa said. “Even though you were hoping to get in, I bet it was different then you were expecting.” She paused for a moment and chucked. “After all, you said you tried to keep a low profile. It must have been a shock coming to Crossroads and ending up smack in the middle of everything.”

“I really was” I said. “Despite all that, I still managed to keep the important stuff to myself...” As the words came out of my mouth I froze as they resonated back to me. Even though Roxa had been mostly content to listen, her light banter and acceptance as we told our story had been a warm balm to the guilt and stress that built up over the year. Sometimes that wasn't enough though. Sometimes the guilt and regrets have grown in so deep that the only way to deal is to get in and cut it out at the core. If I wanted to lie I'd call it emotional self surgery. Being honest though, it was a singer hitting the correct note and shattering a wineglass. The guilt that I'd been feeling the whole year coming to the front of my mind in an overwhelming wave of emotion.

Suddenly tears started running down my face.

“Felicity... Flick?” Roxa asked concerned, obviously noticing the sudden change in my mood.

“I'm a really a huge hypocrite.” I managed to choke out the words through my sobs. “I keep saying how important it is for everyone to be honest with each other... all the while I'm hoarding secrets like treasure.” I took a hitching breath. “If you hadn't seen Tabbris... I don't think... I wouldn't have said anything. I would've kept it to myself.”

I couldn't stop my tears as the words fell out. “Everything I've learned this year. The friends I've made. The people I've grown to trust. I've just been lying and lying to them. They trusted me with their secrets and I was too weak, too scared to do the same in return.

_It's okay Flick._ Tabbris reassured over and over in the back of my mind trying to help calm me down. It usually would have been enough, but today it wasn't.

“Even having to deal with a Seosten plot to kill Avalon... There were people that I should have trusted. Avalon and Shiori are both immune to possession. I could have explained everything to them. They would've believed me. The same thing with Vanessa and Tristan. Tabbris is their sister too, I could have told them the truth. We could have trusted some of the adults, Gaia and Gabriel are too strong to be taken easily. Anything that could have gotten them... we'd have had way worse problems to deal with in that case. They would have helped us if we'd just gone to them and been honest.”

Roxa reached out taking my hand as she searched for the right words. “I think you're being a little too hard on yourself.” Her thumb made soothing circles around one of my knuckles as she spoke. “From what you said, in some ways the two of you basically grew up on your own. I know what that's like. You didn't have anyone else that you could trust with what you knew. That had to leave a mark. Even though you kept Tabbris and your not exactly bystander standard childhood a secret, you had a lot of other secrets that you found during your time at Crossroads. You could have kept them to yourself. You didn't though, you shared them with the people you trusted. Your team, Shiori, Koren, Miranda, even me. You're not a hypocrite. You were afraid. Anyone could understand that.”

I could hear the unsaid question in Roxa's voice of 'what were you so afraid of'. “H-hiding Tabbris and the fact that I was anything other than an ordinary bystander was second nature for us early. Crossroads just reinforced that. Even before we found out about Charmeine we assumed that there were at least a few Seosten lurking around we needed to avoid attention from. We had to worry about Heretics and what they would do if they found about Tabbris.

“Even after finding out that Gaia has been working to change the system from the inside and was on our side... telling the truth about Tabbris scared me. We almost did it a few times, but I couldn't manage to work up the nerve. I was worried that it'd be different because Tabbris was a Seosten. Maybe it was irrational, but... the two of us had been together for years at that point. What if she thought that Tabbris had done something to my mind? What if she hurt Tabbris? What if she tried to separate us? I had to keep her safe.”

I must have had a pitiful look on my face because without hesitating Roxa pulled me into a tight hug. “It's okay. It might have to wait until we make it back to Earth, but you can always tell them the truth if you want. Tell them the same story that you told me. Keeping everything a secret has obviously been hurting you. I know you know it but talking about your problems really does help. You can let us help you bear the weight of all of this.”

I couldn't help myself. Being told that being honest and talking helped solve problems made me burst out laughing. “Thanks Roxa,” I said after managing to catch control of myself, “I really needed that.”

“You know I've got your back.” Roxa said with a smile. “If you want- if it'd help I'll be there with you when you tell the others.”

There was really only one thing that we could say to that. “Thanks Roxa, that would be great. We would really appreciate that.”

We sat like that quietly for a while, keeping watch. Eventually we started talking again. Nothing as heavy as our previous discussion just small talk. When our watch ended and dawn arrived on the alien planet I felt better then I had in a long time.


End file.
